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ANN ARBOR, Mich. — A Jim Harbaugh news conference can veer in many directions, shifting seamlessly from football into a lesson on Newtonian mechanics.
In the midst of one such digression earlier this season, Harbaugh reflected on the forces that can pull a successful football program back down to Earth. Winning isn’t a default state, but rather a constant process of overcoming gravity. The longer a team stays on top, the more it’s subjected to these downward forces: injuries, ego, complacency, bad luck, rival teams and, above all, human nature.
“What goes up must come down,” Harbaugh said in early October. “The gravitational force of Earth is tremendous. So are some of the forces against a football team.”
Less than three weeks later, news broke that the NCAA was investigating Michigan for an alleged in-person scouting scheme. Now the program is caught in exactly the kind of situation Harbaugh feared, its 23-game Big Ten winning streak under attack from all sides.
The past month has brought a constant stream of bad news, including the three-game suspension that will force Harbaugh to miss Saturday’s showdown against No. 2 Ohio State, one of the biggest games in the 126-year history of the rivalry. Michigan hasn’t allowed the drama to derail an 11-0 start or its quest for a third consecutive Big Ten championship. But the scandal has created a drag at a pivotal moment and called Michigan’s achievements into question.
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“Knowing how much blood, sweat and tears we put into this season, and all the hours we put in, (the results) being diluted by a scandal is unfortunate,” quarterback J.J. McCarthy said. “We’re not worried about that stuff, but it’s just unfortunate that people don’t think we put in the work to get to where we are.”
So how did Michigan end up in this position, with its coach suspended for one of the biggest games in school history and its Big Ten reign threatened by controversy? The answer comes straight out of Harbaugh’s own physics lesson.
As the program climbed higher and higher, its methods became more brazen, its rivals became more unified and Harbaugh’s power became more absolute.
Harbaugh has denied knowledge of the scouting and sign-stealing operation allegedly coordinated by former staffer Connor Stalions, and no evidence has emerged to contradict that claim. But if anyone had the power to make sure Michigan was operating within the rules, it was Harbaugh.
In the past, he had people around him — former adviser Biff Poggi, now the coach at Charlotte, for example — who could level with him about potential problems. As those people moved on, Harbaugh had fewer people looking out for his blind spots and checking his impulses.
“Very few people have the ability to say no to him,” said one person who formerly worked in the Michigan football program, speaking on the condition of anonymity to freely comment on an ongoing NCAA investigation.
Michigan has won back-to-back Big Ten football championships. (Justin Casterline / Getty Images)
Since news of the scandal broke, Harbaugh has repeated the phrase “one-track mind” to describe his method for maintaining focus amid controversy. Friends and peers attest to this single-minded focus that leaves little room for anything but a relentless pursuit of success.
But one of Harbaugh’s greatest strengths can also be one of his greatest weaknesses: He doesn’t see what he doesn’t want to see.
A tumultuous year begins
As Michigan’s Big Ten winning streak grew, so did Harbaugh’s power to run the program as he saw fit. The result was one of the best three-year runs in Michigan history juxtaposed with an almost constant stream of controversy.
This calendar year began with Michigan receiving a draft of potential NCAA infractions dating back to the COVID-19 recruiting dead period. Those Level II allegations were compounded by a more serious charge that Harbaugh failed to cooperate with the NCAA investigation. Michigan’s attempts to reach a negotiated resolution with the NCAA broke down, and the school imposed a three-game suspension on Harbaugh to start the season in hopes of mitigating future sanctions.
Harbaugh also made a series of personnel decisions that went bad. His habit of hiring coaches with ties to his brother John’s Baltimore Ravens staff paid off with defensive coordinators Mike Macdonald and Jesse Minter. The hiring of offensive coordinator Matt Weiss, a longtime Ravens assistant, had lingering repercussions.
Weiss, a former graduate assistant under Harbaugh at Stanford, was known within the Ravens organization for his expertise in analytics and technology. He quickly climbed the ranks of Michigan’s coaching staff but was fired in January following a report of alleged computer-access crimes at Schembechler Hall. A joint investigation between the University of Michigan Police Department and the FBI remains ongoing.
Harbaugh also hired Shemy Schembechler, the son of legendary coach Bo Schembechler, to serve as Michigan’s assistant director of recruiting. Shemy, a longtime NFL scout, had little experience in college football recruiting, and his addition was seen as insensitive to survivors of Robert Anderson, a former team doctor under Bo Schembechler who was accused of abusing scores of Michigan athletes.
Three days after his hiring was confirmed in May, Shemy Schembechler resigned amid backlash over his public social media activity, including likes of racist content. Harbaugh condemned the content on Schembechler’s social media feed and blamed a third-party vendor responsible for conducting background checks.
Those decisions brought unwanted scrutiny to the program but did little to derail Michigan’s on-field success.
The hire that stands to cause the most harm was Stalions, a former student volunteer who joined the recruiting staff in 2022 with a salary of $55,000.
Stalions began showing up on the Michigan sideline long before he was hired as a full-time staffer. He had spent years ingratiating himself with members of Harbaugh’s staff, two people close to the program said, forming particularly close bonds with assistants Chris Partridge and Jay Harbaugh, who is Jim’s son. Stalions’ specialty was decoding other teams’ signals, a practice that isn’t prohibited as long as teams aren’t gathering information through in-person scouting.
Starting in 2021, Stalions’ methods became more brazen, according to evidence obtained by the NCAA and described by the Big Ten. The NCAA provided evidence that Stalions purchased tickets to at least four games involving Michigan’s opponents in 2021, then as many as 13 games in 2022, his first season as a full-time salaried staff member.
According to the Washington Post, evidence of Stalions’ scouting scheme ended up in the hands of a third-party investigative firm. The firm provided it to the NCAA, setting in motion one of the strangest months in Michigan history.
Michigan ended an eight-game losing streak to Ohio State in 2021. (Mike Mulholland / Getty Images)
How Michigan’s scouting scandal erupted
On Oct. 18, NCAA president Charlie Baker convened a call with leadership from Michigan and the Big Ten, a step the Big Ten described as extraordinary. Baker informed Michigan and the conference that it had obtained credible evidence of the in-person scouting scheme allegedly orchestrated by Stalions. The Big Ten then informed Michigan’s future opponents, starting with Michigan State.
The Big Ten initially sought to distance itself from the NCAA investigation, which hinged on an NCAA bylaw that prohibits in-person scouting of future opponents. Over time, pressure mounted on Big Ten commissioner Tony Petitti to punish Michigan under the terms of the league’s sportsmanship policy. After hearing impassioned pleas from Big Ten coaches and athletic directors, Petitti notified Michigan on Nov. 4 that the Big Ten was moving forward with disciplinary action.
Harbaugh’s strained relationship with his peers in the Big Ten didn’t help his cause, according to multiple people familiar with the Michigan football program. Harbaugh has had adversarial relations with competing coaches for much of his career, illustrated by terse postgame encounters with USC coach Pete Carroll and Detroit Lions coach Jim Schwartz during his stints at Stanford and with the San Francisco 49ers. Harbaugh eschews the normal custom of chatting with the opposing head coach at midfield before games and doesn’t participate in the usual niceties of the profession. Though sign-stealing is a common practice in college football, Harbaugh’s peers claimed Michigan was violating both the NCAA rulebook and the unwritten code of sportsmanship by infiltrating opposing stadiums and compiling video of teams’ signals.
After ruthlessly dominating the Big Ten for three years in a row, Harbaugh had a unified group of rivals ready to attack and few friends willing to come to his defense.
“There’s nothing in his life, no dimensions, other than football,” said a person close to Harbaugh, granted anonymity to discuss private conversations. “The same thing causes the other football coaches to not like him.”
Harbaugh’s most ardent defenders were members of his family and leaders at Michigan, including president Santa Ono and athletic director Warde Manuel. And defend him they did, mounting legal and rhetorical challenges to the Big Ten’s attempt to suspend a sitting head coach in the midst of an NCAA investigation.
The Big Ten announced Harbaugh’s three-game suspension for violating its sportsmanship policy while the team was in midair on a flight from Detroit to State College, Pa., for a game against Penn State. Michigan officials were not informed in advance, and Harbaugh said he learned of the suspension when someone on the flight showed him the news on social media. Though the Big Ten said it did not have evidence directly implicating Harbaugh, it said it punished Harbaugh because he “embodies the university for purposes of its football program” as the head coach.
Michigan quickly fired back, asking a Washtenaw County judge to grant a temporary restraining order that would allow Harbaugh to coach while the school challenged his suspension. After the judge declined to issue a ruling before Michigan’s game at Penn State, Manuel responded with a fiery statement promising to continue Michigan’s fight against the league.
“You may have removed him from our sidelines today, but Jim Harbaugh is our head football coach,” Manuel said. “We look forward to defending Jim’s right to coach our football team at the hearing on Friday.”
Michigan beat Penn State a day after Jim Harbaugh’s suspension. (Scott Taetsch / Getty Images)
Michigan’s stance shifted abruptly in the middle of last week. The Big Ten had pressed the university for permission to receive updates from the NCAA on its investigation, and Michigan reluctantly granted the request a day before the Big Ten announced Harbaugh’s suspension, according to the Big Ten’s notice of disciplinary action. The Big Ten obtained what it described as “significant new information” that emerged in joint interviews with Michigan and the NCAA, according to the Big Ten’s letter.
The Big Ten did not rule out imposing additional sanctions on Michigan, and the free flow of information from the NCAA to the Big Ten meant the league had real-time access to the NCAA’s findings. A day before the scheduled court hearing, Michigan dropped its legal challenge and announced the Big Ten had agreed to close its investigation, meaning the league would no longer seek updates from the NCAA. It was a turning point, signaling Michigan’s willingness to confront the scope of its issues rather than deflecting blame.
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A day after dropping its legal challenge, Michigan announced the firing of Partridge, who was in his second stint on Harbaugh’s staff as linebackers coach. Two Michigan sources said the basis for Partridge’s firing was a belief that he interfered with the investigation through his communication with players, not a determination that he knew about the scouting scheme. Michigan left open the possibility of other disciplinary actions as more information emerged.
Even Harbaugh’s staunchest defenders are bracing for the likelihood of additional sanctions, including a possible suspension in 2024. Meanwhile, the 2023 team is trying to extend the season as long as possible and make good on its goal of winning a national championship.
A victory against Ohio State would allow Harbaugh to return for the Dec. 2 Big Ten Championship Game against Iowa with a College Football Playoff bid on the line. A loss would bring Michigan’s season to a crashing halt, dashing hopes of a third consecutive conference title and leaving only the narrowest path back to the CFP.
Whether it happens Saturday afternoon or six weeks from now, Michigan will have to confront a future that’s anything but certain.
Is the NFL next for Harbaugh?
Michigan was on the verge of announcing a lucrative contract extension for Harbaugh when news of the NCAA investigation broke in October. Those plans were put on hold. Even if Harbaugh had signed the deal, it wouldn’t have precluded him from taking another run at the NFL.
Now, the NFL is widely viewed as his most attractive option. The Wolverines have a senior-laden team with at least a dozen potential draft picks, and whoever coaches the team next season will face a significant rebuilding project. Though it’s premature to declare the end of Michigan’s reign, the program will look drastically different next season.
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Throughout Harbaugh’s coaching career, his greatest achievements have been followed by significant changes. He led Stanford to an Orange Bowl victory in 2010 and left for the San Francisco 49ers four days later. He led the 49ers to the Super Bowl in his third season, but a fractured relationship with the team’s front office landed him at Michigan a year later.
Nine years into his tenure at Michigan, Harbaugh seemed acutely aware of the challenges of sustaining success.
“People that read like to read the salacious story, like to see where things may be divided,” he said earlier this season. “It’s just human nature.”
Michigan soon found itself in the middle of the biggest drama of the college football season. The team hasn’t cracked under the pressure, though the biggest challenges lie ahead, starting Saturday against the Buckeyes.
Michigan has managed to defy gravity so far, but no team can do it forever. Behind Michigan’s meteoric rise was an inescapable law of physics: the steeper the climb, the harder the crash.
(Top illustration: Samuel Richardson / The Athletic; photo: Gregory Shamus / Getty Images)
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